Erin Baker: India's growing taste for British cars

Unsurprisingly, given that Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover, and the company is producing very “British” premium cars, the top-five selling British models in India this year are, in descending order, the Land Rover Discovery Sport, Land Rover Range Rover Evoque, Jaguar XF, Jaguar XE and Jaguar F-Pace.

British car exports to India have grown 11-fold since 2009, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Last year, 3,372 cars were exported from the UK to India, which was an increase of 15.8 per cent on the previous year (in 2009, just 309 cars were exported there). It still only puts India in eighth place on the list of Asian markets the UK exports to, behind China, Japan and South Korea, but it’s growing again. Asia is currently Britain’s third biggest trading region after Europe and America, with 13.4 per cent of exports last year.

It’s not just the new-car market which is benefitting from this export stream: the parts and supply chains are consequently also growing in India. Last year, according to SMMT figures, £14 million worth of UK car parts were bought by the Indian automotive aftermarket, and the SMMT predicts this figure will rise by about 15 per cent each year over the next five years as Indian motorists look for high-quality British parts to fit to their cars.

It’s not all one-way traffic: Indian-built models (the Ford EcoSport, Ford Ka+, Nissan Micra and Suzuki Baleno) accounted for 31,535 new-car registrations in the UK, an increase of 12.6 per cent.

“Growing prosperity in Asian markets in recent years has seen a surge in demand for premium cars, even despite high import duties in many countries”, said Tamzen Isacsson, SMMT Director of Communications and International, yesterday. “As a car market, India really understands British brands and thanks to its engineering excellence and skilled workforce, the UK has a rich heritage of producing the highest-quality, globally competitive premium vehicles. India and the UK have a great history of collaboration in the automotive sector and it is essential we secure a mutually beneficial trade relationships in the future.”

An automotive trade delegation is in New Dehli this week; more car sales in India would be very good news, but a surge in British components exports is a really cheering thought: there are 78,000 people employed in more than 2,000 companies in the British supply chain and the SMMT has identified billions of pounds of unfulfilled opportunities for Tier One suppliers. Let the delegation get to work….